


Relative X

by honeynoir (bracelets)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bracelets/pseuds/honeynoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River is a terrible, but brilliant, student. Odd people keep showing up. There might be a connection. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ten connected let's-call-them-drabbles + a bonus one combined into a longer piece, in an approximation of this-happened-after-that, except for the first one.
> 
> Written in 2010; utterly AU now.
> 
> Next chapter has another seven drabbles/ficlets.

**i.**

River is a terrible, but brilliant, student. University is a necessary nuisance to her.

He’s there for a scant two months, collectively. They’re about the same age (oh, that is so utterly utterly relative). He has to wear shades to hide his age.

He’s supposed to be a wunderkind. She’s as good as one.

He’s an assistant, or something, River never catches the full lie. The blatant truth is that he knows more than all the professors put together. About everything. About anything.

River knows (nearly) all, she thinks. She’s young, but deliciously old in so many ways.

Once he dares to wear a wedding ring, a terribly beaten-up old thing. It confuses River at first. She doesn’t dare to think like that, only she gathers he wishes she would.

Well, nearly (nearly) all.

During a lecture about Cleopatra he places a hand on her knee and she places a hand on his hand and all the others say: they’re having an affair. Since this is the 51st century, it’s a statement followed by a collective shrug.

River has fallen in love with at least two of him already, unknowingly, and this one might just be the easiest one of all.

 

**ii.**

It’s way too early in the morning, and she’s only had time for a precious few sips of coffee before class (and still she has to sneak in and sit in the back of the lecture hall).

No one is looking forward to studying Contemporary Palaeontology, and the introduction of a new teaching assistant is just another point against it. Who cares, _really_?

The man is young; seems harmless, not terribly confident, not entirely awake. He’s wearing trousers of the most egregious shade of purple she’s ever seen, though, which at least indicates some spirit.

He looks the class over, and River has the most curious feeling his gaze lingers on her for much longer than on any of the others, even though she’s so far away. She sits up a bit straighter, just in case.

“This is John Smith,” the Professor says, and the class winces in sympathy, River included. Anyone named that ought to be a static hologram.

The man cares not at all; he simply smiles (just maybe while looking at her).

That was it; he was there among them, already judged and doomed after thirty seconds. He sits down in the front row to listen to the lecture.

River accesses the right program on her padd and prepares to be bored.

When they (finally) break for lunch, River has long since decided to say hello to poor Mr Smith. Can’t hurt, she thinks, and puts on her best manners.

 

**iii.**

Rives decides at a tender age that she won’t fall in love easily. It just seems like the sort of thing one should be able to control.

Years and years later, he shakes her hand once and walks away with her heart.

She spits in the general direction of his retreating back.

She just _knows_ he’s smirking. The bastard.

*

She’s sorting ancient bones. It’s the most creative correctional punishment they can think of. She has no idea what he’s doing there, though. Naturally, she asks him.

“You dared me to come,” he mumbles.

She hates that mumbling. She really, really hates it. “Oh? Did I send out _signals_ , Smith?”

He laughs, softly. “You literally… Well, it’s not important.”

She bristles. “Because that is all kinds of rubbish. Has always been, will always be.”

He looks up at her properly at that. “I love it when you speak time,” he mumbles.

 

**iv.**

Days pass and she can’t stop thinking about that thing he said.

Finally she figures while she still has ancient dust grating under her fingernails, she can bring it up.

She sacrifices her lunch break and (finally) finds him sitting on a bench under rain-heavy skies. He’s still wearing sunglasses (her blood pressure spikes with annoyance) and he’s holding a sandwich, but appears to have no interest whatsoever in eating it.

“Hello,” he says.

“What did you mean with ‘speak time’?” She can see herself reflected in his shades.

“Spoilers,” he mumbles, his tone entirely too smug. He rises and presses the sandwich into her hand (she glances down and it appears to be kippers and a celery stalk on rye bread).

Then he leaves.

And then it begins to rain.

 

**v.**

It’s not a date. And if it is, it’s the worst date she’s ever been on.

After no dinner and several unsuccessful attempts to get him to take her dancing, she manages to corner him between a cypress and a rubbish bin (offline, as usual).

She wonders if she should try to kiss him, but then decides her standards won’t let her before she’s at least looked into his eyes. “Take off the shades.”

He looks pensive. “I wonder if that’s what you meant when you said I’d scare you.”

Her temper flares (in equal parts due to the mumbling and the entirely too-weird allusion to ‘you’). She makes to snatch them off but he’s lightning fast and stops her hand (with the gentlest grip on her wrist) two feet from his face.

She purses her lips sourly. “Let me guess -- spoilers?”

 

**vi.**

River dresses up for industriousness. She pulls back her hair in a tight ponytail and puts on her most severe clothes. She gives herself five hours to finish this task and she intends to do it.

Unfortunately, she’s not alone in the lab.

“You’re grouping this under Mesopotamia?” He snatches the pot she’s just painstakingly cleaned and scanned and compared to ten similar ones. “That’s wrong. It’s so _wrong_ I can’t even look at this.” He places it behind the surface analyser.

She snatches it back, gingerly. The end of her ponytail tickles her neck. “According to the equipment it’s right.”

“Your precious equipment…”

“Leave me alone.”

“I can’t. I’ve tried, but I can’t.”

They eyes meet over the dust aggregator (well, her gaze meets his shades, but she knows he’s looking). “I wouldn’t be above violence,” she says sweetly.

“Oh, I know.”

“And you still find it hard to leave?”

“Desperately.”

River snorts, quite ungracefully. “Why?” she asks, just like she knows he wants her to, and she tries to convey as much in that one word.

He shrugs, not even a little bit casually. “You’re River Song.”

 

**vii.**

He finally takes off his sunglasses, and —

That’s not even age she’s staring at; that’s ancientness. That’s terrifying knowledge spilling out of irises with an inefficient containment field. That’s the profound feeling she should close her eyes as quickly as possible to save herself, and the fact that she can’t tear her gaze away.

He puts on the shades again, with a chilling resignation.

“You’re scared.”

“I’m not”, she says, and as long as she doesn’t _think_ , she isn’t. She’s intrigued, though. Mercilessly intrigued. “Can you take them off again?”

He startles, looks wary, doesn’t believe her. “Once a week. That’s rule 28. Rule 29, incidentally, details what can be construed as a week.”

She drops her hands to her hips (when had she pressed them to her chest?), and demands: “What rules?”

“There’s an amendment in rule 103, of course. A technicality.” He smirks, and then he winks; over the severe frames there’s a tug at his right eyebrow.

 

**viii.**

She spends years at University and when she graduates he’s long gone. He’s shown up intermittently, of course. Left, returned, left again, until her head spins with confusion and she worries because she likes it.

She writes five theses (officially), and four of them are acknowledged by the faculty. For her work on the earliest nanogenes, for her theories about the second generation pyramids, and for her analysis of an ancient civilisation worshipping a blue box, she gets an official pat on the back and a stiff dinner in her honour. For her pièce de résistance — the mapping of occurrences of the phrase ‘hello sweetie’ all through history — she gets her name written in real ink on real paper, framed in real glass. And she gets to hold a lecture.

He shows up for the three dinners, and at least that’s something.

Her lecture is marred by a man in a bowtie and a betasselled fez clapping much too enthusiastically, but River is determined to enjoy every moment, weird strangers and all.

She’s a little disappointed he doesn’t show up for the after-lecture gathering either; he could have held the bulky frame containing her diploma.

“That was very enlightening,” someone says in her ear. It’s fez-man, and he gives her such a weird smile.

“Really? Could you hear anything at all over the noise you were making?”

“All I was supposed to.” He plucks the fez from his head and places it on hers (she’s never been more grateful for her curls).

During the fraction of a second it takes her to knock it off he disappears. She’s cradling the frame awkwardly, and when she renews her one-handed grip on it she notices —

There is a piece of bright yellow paper stuck to the glass. It says, simply, _Hello, sweetie._

 

**ix.**

Fez-man wanders across her path. Literally. He seems as surprised to see her as she is to see him.

She stops dead.

He moves about on the same spot, staring at her. The gravel crunches under his boots. There’s no other sound in the garden; but then, it’s dead.

“I didn’t think you’d be outside,” he says. He’s wearing a bigger fez, now, with a golden tassel.

“You thought that was clever?” she says.

“What?”

“That note. You thought it was clever.”

“I know it was.”

“Sorry, didn’t laugh.”

“It wasn’t a joke.”

“No? I think you read my abstract in the database and thought it would be fun.”

“Haven’t actually read it. I _can’t_ , you see.” He grins. “Big fan, though.”

 

**x.**

River works late, in the corner of the University museum dedicated to literature of the bound variety.

She gets up for another lexicon (such hard work, books) and when she returns to her table he’s sitting in her chair.

He beams. “Hello!” There’s no fez this time. It’s a great improvement.

She holds the very heavy volume at arm’s length and doesn’t know what to say. The man is an expert at appearing and disappearing without a trace, apparently. (Not unlike a certain someone else.)

“Need to see a sabre-toothed tiger,” he continues. “For… reference. Won’t take two minutes. Walk me there.”

And River does; she puts the book down, peels off her white gloves, and leads the way. Because she’s intrigued. Because she wants to talk to him. Because he seems to enjoy her work. And because there’s a knockout spray that she hasn’t had a chance to try yet strapped to her belt.

“So…” she says, “You crashed my lecture and gave me that note without having read my abstract?”

“I didn’t crash your party — I mean, lecture! I was invited. Sort of. In retrospect.” He doesn’t let her lead with more than a step. “And I’m familiar with your work. Very familiar.”

“Really? Then what do you think it means?

“Means? Does it have to mean anything?”

“Well, someone’s put it there for a reason.”

He coughs. “Do you know who?”

River purses her lips; she thought she’d get to ask the questions. She answers anyway. “No, but the main theories basically boil down to: advertising, art, conspiracy, aliens, or — my favourite — star-crossed lovers. Anyone of those you find believable?”

“Let’s not go there.”

As he manages to look both incredibly self-satisfied and dearly sour at the same time, River decides to change the subject. “Do you want your fez back?”

“Keep it! The note, too. You’ll need that.” He smiles again, just as easily as before.

It’s a short walk, and all too soon they’re enveloped by ancient skeletons propped up in every conceivable fashion, forced to seem alive, moving. “Here it is,” she says, and points to a tiger forever ready to spring, its trademark teeth bared in a roar.

“Perfect!” He reaches into a pocket and hauls out a contraption so ancient River doesn’t even realise what it is until it’s given off a sharp flash and spit out a square paper onto her shoe.

The man picks the picture up and waves it about furiously. “Thank you, Doctor, must hurry now, really.” He backs away, trying to force the camera back into the pocket with his free hand.

“I’m not a doctor!” she cries.

“I am!” he shouts, and then he’s lost among the dead things.

 

 

_**Bonus (or That Part I Couldn’t Work In Anywhere)** — goes somewhere between x.’s ‘Keep the fez’ and ‘Here’s the tiger’._

 

The Doctor really must get back with a photo of a sabre-toothed tiger, but River has sort of -- stopped.

Half-visible through the doorway to another chamber, there’s a giant skeleton of a legless greatlizard, laid out on the bare floor. It takes up most of the space, and the bones gleam horribly white in the sharp light — and River stares at it with a small smile on her face.

“Is there something special about that monstrosity?” he asks (he has no fond memories of the live ones).

River’s decidedly smirking now. “I had one of the best snogs ever in the chest cavity of that.”

The Doctor grimaces. “I didn’t need to know that.”

*

_Two months earlier (well, for River)._

He’s really much too nervous for someone who’s been snogged a lot as of late.

“Come on!” she shouts, and jumps from one giant rib to another.

It’s oddly dark and decidedly wrong to be in here, and he’s so peeved the Laws of Time forced him to suggest they enter when the thought never seemed to occur to her. (Though best ever did sound quite nice.)

“Something wrong? Just think of it as a broken cave.”

“Performance anxiety,” he mumbles, not loudly enough for her to hear, and wipes his hands on raspberry-red trousers. “Guess it’s better than jealousy.”

“Just come here!”  



	2. drabbles #11-17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More er-sort-of-drabbles!
> 
> Thanks to [ladymercury_10](http://ladymercury-10.livejournal.com/), who pointed out something that was unclear.

There’s an actual Persian carpet (17th century) on the floor. Naturally the Doctor lies down on it. Naturally she follows his example.  
   
She rests her head on his chest. His waistcoat smells like grass.  
   
He’s a textbook example of sprawling. She tries to be a bit dignified; crosses her ankles, hides her hands in her curls.  
   
He’s talking about weaving, and sand storms, and fedoras, and blueberries, all at once. She can keep up quite well (not least because every word vibrates against her skull) but why should she have to? “Can’t you _ever_ just shut it?” she asks.  
   
He waits a beat before he answers, thinks it through; that is unusual. “Can’t. I fear I may be running out of words, you know, finally. I want to talk while I can.”  
   
She rolls her eyes. Always that precociousness. “I think you just like the sound of your own voice.”  
   
He laughs at that; so much that she has to sit up.

  


**~**

  


Oh, how she wants to wipe that _stupid_ smile off his face. He’s just told her she should have a cucumber sandwich because she _will_ like them some day, and he’s one hundred percent sure of that (well, ninety five, there is a small chance it might have been squash on that sandwich he’s thinking about actually) and as a period, or perhaps an exclamation point, there’s that smile.    
   
“What are you talking about?” she asks, as she always does, if increasingly testily each time.  
   
He doesn’t answer this time either. Just gives her a slightly broader version of that smile. It’s soppy and all too knowing and just generally _stupid_.  
   
She wants some answers. She’s sick of waiting for them. Simply _asking_ him doesn’t work; never has and never will. She’s tried nagging, too, but that didn’t work either, and was uncomfortable for both of them.  
   
She’s thinking handcuffs now. He seems to respond well to those; time and that afternoon that pair of Zygons had held them hostage in Professor Luu’s office had shown that.  
   
Perhaps next weekend? If she shifts some stuff around.  
   
Yes. That might work.  
   
He’s looking at her. He’s raised a brow, and his smile is more slanted to one side and marginally less dumb.  
   
Sometimes she has the most uncomfortable feeling he knows what she’s thinking.

  


**~**

  


Half-way through her third year she runs into another strange man. Literally. She turns a corner and he turns the same corner from the other direction, and they meet at the edge and bounce off one another.  
   
He recoils and throws up his hands and she rubs her bare wrist, having slammed it into a great big button affixed to his great big coat (which is _much_ too heavy for the season).  
   
He has great dark eyes, too, and quite ridiculous hair and he _stares_ and despite the AC creating a stiff breeze not a strand on his head moves. “Oh, hullo!” he says, a bit breathless. “You’re really here and you’re really you and you’re… really walking much too quickly.”  
   
“Can I help you?”  
   
He doesn’t listen, that much is obvious. He searches her face with restless eyes and looks her up and down and something pricks at the back of her skull. Then, abruptly, his face first falls and then quickly reshapes itself into a stiff grimace that doesn’t look at all comfortable, and she gets the impression he would like to run away, but he doesn’t; instead he rocks back on his heels and stares some more and she swears she can see the lines in his face deepen.  
   
“Help me?” he repeats, finally. “Yes! If you could, would, tell me… Well, that is to say, simply – I’m looking for that place where you keep all the vending machines. I am in the mood for vending machine… food.”  
   
River purses her lips and raises her brows. “Turn around, go straight ahead, then to the left, and then there’ll be signs leading you to the canteen. If you can’t remember that or get lost on the way, just consult one of these screens.” She points to the info screen built into the wall right between them, and then she smiles.  
   
“Thank you, yes, that was…all I needed to know.” He spins around, the coat fanning out, and then he strides down the corridor with great speed, violently raking his fingers through his hair.  
   
River frowns. Why do the odd ones always find _her_?  
   
The Doctor is at her side, as if sprung from thin air. He wears crescentic shades today, and they’ve slipped daringly low. She watches him watch the man in the coat amble away. He’s attentive to the point of trembling. She’s only curious.  
   
“Do you know anything about that?” She nods toward the man. (He’s at the junction, and then he turns in the wrong direction.)  
   
“He’s so young. He doesn’t know better.” The Doctor worries his lower lip, and then he reaches out and strokes her back.

  


**~**

  


River is long since out of University; she’s travelled the Universe, had an exhibition in her name, cut her hair short. 

He looks the same. As he’s always done, as he always will. 

“So, I saw you this morning,” she says, because the silence has stretched a little too far. “Bowtie-braces you.” 

He frowns, and a line much too deep for his young face cuts between his brows. “Do you like him?” 

River snorts. “Of course.” 

“Specify -- what do you like? Is it vigour? Ardour?” 

“What now?” 

“You told me once, in anger, that you had a favourite.” 

“I do like confidence,” she says, and pinches him. It helps, sometimes, when he’s like this. “I lied, will lie. No favourites. The reason should be obvious.” 

“You might have,” he says, thinly, absently rubbing his arm. “I can never tell, you know.”

  


**~**

  


The yellow note is a thorn in her side, an itch at the back of her skull, quite possibly a joke, but definitely a mystery. So River turns to her analytical side. She clears a space on her desk and places the note in the middle of it. Around it she spreads her brief comments on the matter, her lecture transcript, time tables; all printed out on flimsy, sheer, evaporated-by-morning paper. She should be working on her postgrad courses, should be planning an excavation of her own. She just has to scratch this itch first.  
   
The problem is that it makes no sense. None of it.  
   
She stirs a mug of tea and looks the information over.  
   
The times, the days, when she’s met the man in the fez seem random and haphazard in relation to one another. There was that first time, at her lecture; next a Monday; then a Thursday. In the evening, just after lunch, late at night, respectively.  
   
The man makes no sense, either, and her one comment re: him isn’t very enlightening: ‘Talks rubbish. Wears fugly fez’.  
   
She lifts the spoon to her mouth and tastes the tea. It is bitter and sharp; even those few drops make her tongue curl up. She dunks the spoon back into the mug with much more force than necessary.  
   
Tea goes everywhere.  
   
River bites back a swear word and surveys the damage. Amber drops are splattered across her desk. Across the books, across her padd, across the lone tealight. Across her lecture transcript, the paper now rapidly curling up and turning to steam.  
   
But… there’s no tea on the yellow note. Not a single drop. There’s a spray of them heading for it, and then it just… stops. It’s cut off abruptly; a _drop_ is cut in half, even. The note is still brilliantly yellow, still bearing only ‘ _Hello Sweetie_ ’. She picks up the spoon again and deliberately positions it over the note. A drop hovers from the faux-steel. Then it falls, lands, makes a tiny dark splash across the yellow… and then it disappears. Is soaked up.  
   
She makes a face she’s glad no one sees, and repeats the whole thing: spoon dip, falling drop. Drop lands, is soaked up.  
   
She does it again. With the same result.  
   
She picks the note up. It’s dry. Flips it over. The back is bright yellow, too, save the dirty strip of glue at the top. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. She puts it down again. It is clean, bright, yellow. There are only those two words.  
   
She ponders what next to subject it to, what kind of fluid it will soak up – she’s brought soup for supper, and there’s a creamy lip gloss and perhaps some liquid eyeliner in her bag. She has an inkling of what the note might be. It's obviously sophisticated technology, and if it is what she suspects it is... She closes her eyes for a moment, hoping for an epiphany of some sort, for some miraculous answer to all her questions; but none comes, and she opens them again - and now, below _Hello Sweetie_ , there are other words. A full sentence, in fact: _This is not how I like my tea._ It’s the same handwriting.  
   
Now she definitely knows what it is, the note. Psychic paper. Has to be. (Despite growing up with countless rumours about it, she can't recall ever having heard as much as a syllable about any ability to transport liquid, but it _has_ to be.) She would never have thought it of that man, though. Then again, everything is stealable.  
   
She rummages through a desk drawer, finds an old-fashioned pen. It sits slightly odd in her hand.  ‘What is this?’ she writes, quickly, just beneath the new sentence, every tiny muscle in her hand so tight she can barely move the pen. The question mark comes out all unnaturally large and squiggly.  
   
Her words and the new sentence fade. As soon as they’re completely gone, another sentence takes their place, seemingly out of thin air, letter by letter, but so quickly she can only barely register that it doesn’t all appear at once. _Took you long enough._  
   
‘Who are you?’ she writes, and the pen moves easier now.  
   
 _One of me, of course._  
   
‘WHO?’ She presses unnecessarily hard against the paper, but it soaks the pressure up as well; there’s not a mark on it, save for the ink.  
   
 _Fine._ That comes first. And then, below that, _I’m a Doctor._  
   
A surge of anger comes to life in her, hot and sudden, drowning her confusion. Is that supposed to be funny? Someone putting a recent graduate down? Some kind of lark? Or is it really a Time Agent? Or is it some sort of allusion to _the_ Doctor, even though she can’t see what fez-man could have in common with _him_ , save perhaps a general quirkiness. River hesitates, pen poised over the note. She wants to formulate a question, something clever, something that burns and elicits the perfect response, but it’s not working and finally she simply writes what she _wants_ to. ‘ Go to hell!’  
   
It takes a full ten seconds for the reply to come, and when it does, it is concise: **_:)_**

  


**~**

  


An attack on the University, and somehow he manages to lock himself in with the attackers. River would have thought it just his bad luck, had he not deliberately shut the door in her face, had she not heard the lock activate.  
   
Somehow he manages to be the only one who comes out.  
   
“My fault,” he tells her, in an empty hallway, when the medic has let him go. The next thing he says is, “I have to leave.”  
   
“Your fault?”  
   
The hallway ends and he steps into a lift. “I’m sorry, River, but…” And the door slides shut and cuts off his words and his presence and River gives it a furious kick, and that doesn’t help at all.  
 

  


**~**

  


He’s gone. She’s still there, and her life is much the same as ever. She spends time with her friends, dates a few people/near-people/things, answers all the police’s questions, does well in class. She’s bored, but that’s all she’ll concede to.  
   
She has a respite from odd men, at least.  
   
There are odd women instead.  
   
First, there’s a blonde in an oversized parka who “Just wanted a look”.  
   
Then, there’s a dainty dark one in a chemise and heavy boots who says, verbatim, “Hello! Oh, _bother_ , I forgot my cloche!”, before she spins around and runs off.  
   
A few months after that, there’s this supply teacher, whose hair is silver on grey on white, a man who never shuts up but to grin. She quite likes him. He has the most perplexing dialect; but it is pleasant, and fascinating. He seems merely a little bit odd, she decides.  
   
“Riv _ers_ ong,” he says one day, when the lesson ends, “Would you mind staying behind?”  
   
She quite likes the way he says her name, too. She gathers her things and approaches him somewhat guardedly. Perhaps she argued the uselessness of spending all of next week learning about the second-to-sixteenth societies of Sol-eight-ninety-four-dash-seven a bit too vehemently.  
   
He grins at her, pulls a piece of flimsy paper from a pocket and looks at it. He clears his throat. “It’s just… I’m so very bad at saying goodbye.”  
   
She can see the paper plainly; it is filled with mere doodles, circles and such, and still she can’t shake the feeling that he’s reciting something from it. _Well_ , she thinks. _That’s just fabulous._ She doesn’t even know whether that was sarcasm or not.  
   
“You’ll get me back later,” he finishes.  
   
“Meaning?” she demands sharply. “ _Professor._ ”  
   
“Oh, I wouldn’t know. But I’m not one to ignore a message from the future.” Then he crumples the paper, shrugs, winks, and leaves.


End file.
